Pressing on

This book is a collection of my most true heart of hearts. The poems herein are direct representations of sights and emotions I have experienced along this journey thus far. From hate, sadness and depression to love, forgiveness and joy mixed in with a little creative thinking, a few rants and a personal discovery of what it's like to love writing out each step I take. In order for me to fully explain where these writings came from I must start at the beginning. I am a born again Christian. I accepted the Lord in 1998. I said the prayer was baptized and tried hard to fit into this new world of forgiveness, grace and mercy but, found that around every corner failure was still a very real reality in me and others. When the pastor of the church I attended announced he had cheated on his wife I flipped out. I decided I wasn't going to learn anything from a man who couldn't learn it himself and so I took my family and we left the church never to return. I never gave the truth of Christ or his gospel very much thought from that time on, until 2005 when I went through a hurtful divorce and something more real than anything I had experienced before happened inside of me. I changed almost overnight and though it was an unwilling change the change came all the same. Shortly after this I met my currant wife whom God used to save what was left of me before I lost it too. I started visiting a Baptist church in 2006 and then started attending regularly in 2007 when I came under an and I got to know Jesus on a more intimate level than I knew could be possible. But there came a time that the so called "honeymoon" ended and I found myself having to grow up again only this time in Christ. This brings us to the where I am now and have been for some time undeniable conviction from Jesus at my place of work. I was involved in ripping people off (for lack of a better explanation) and I could not do it any longer. Once I knew this and who it was from I prayed and said " if this is your will that I leave my job of 12 years to get away from this way of life then you have to get me out of here." There were no magic tricks or angel encounters but, I did suddenly have a courage I hadn't known and when the next opportunity to "rip someone off" came I quit my job telling my boss I could no longer do this. This was something I never would have ever done but, again things were changing in me. From this point on things got worse before they even thought about getting better. In mid-2007, before we had gotten married, a problem arose that I planned to deal with on my own. The plan was not a good one to say the least and I ended up in the garage alone for an entire weekend, just me and a car and a copy of scripture. I would work a little and read a little and by the end of the weekend another change happened in my heart. I believe it was at this moment that the Holy Spirit came and sealed me. Everything changed, everything looked different and smelled different, sounded and felt different. I knew at that point that enough was enough. I called off my plan, begged forgiveness form all whom I affected and pursued Jesus with all I had in me. I got very involved with the church now, sort of at an adolescence stage I suppose you could say, where I feel alone often and like I don't fit in or belong anywhere but, my relationship with Christ is still real and true and though I bring a dysfunctional offering to it he's always there and never far. In 2010 I started writing short poems about how I felt, which was ashamed of all the sin I had ever done knowing that Jesus died for it all and heartbroken that he had to for there was no other way. Poetry became an outlet to at least take some of the burden weight of myself off of myself and developed and is still developing into expressions of my gratitude for his grace and mercy.